The Future of Education: From Land Grants to Digital Grants
What will a post-pandemic “new order” in higher ed look like? Businesses and educators know they need to prepare people for very different jobs in the future of work, but they’ve been slow to revamp their education and training models or collaborate with each other. What’s needed are more flexible partnerships, predictive and agile approaches to skills identification and curriculum change, and digitally driven modes of delivery to prepare people for what comes next
If past is prologue, consider: In 1947, because of the GI Bill, U.S. World War II veterans accounted for nearly half of all college admissions, and half of all World War II veterans participated in some form of education or job training with the benefits. Institutions like the University of California eventually burgeoned to 10 campuses, fueling degrees (and lifelong jobs) in new, postwar professions like materials science, nuclear engineering and swords-to-plowshares international development (and statecraft).
As a digital parallel to the land-grant colleges that launched U.S. flagships of higher ed after WWII or at the outset of the First Industrial Revolution, imagine if a Spotify-like “digital grant” ensued (recalling the impact that iTunesU had on MOOCs, for example), underwriting access to the highest quality distance-credentialing. This could launch more affordable and faster credentials, tightly tuned with fluid employment markets and finetuned across career(s).
Potentially beneficial not only for professionals but also for higher-ed staff, approaches like these could also complement the curriculum for students at bachelor, master and doctoral levels. High-quality, innovative and learner-centered education and training offered by universities and other education and training organizations could be enhanced through the flexibility that micro-credentials can offer.
Digital offerings like these represent new pathways to engagement — and recurring revenue (i.e., Harvard Business School Online, Berkeley Global). But schools shouldn’t bet the brand if the offering’s ROI isn’t there. Additionally, it’s an open question whether having “Harvard,” “Oxford,” “Cambridge,” “INSEAD,” “Stanford” or “Yale” on a LinkedIn profile conveys stature, positive “hustle” and a truly meaningful micro-credential or simply status inflation/exaggeration or worse: brand dilution for the university (giving new meaning to “earning a B.S.”).
What all this means is that, going forward, students will expect to learn differently from how their parents (or even older siblings) did. In a digital-first world, they will expect content that responds to them. Learning experiences will offer Amazon-like ease of access and be highly compelling, even bingeworthy, drawing students from one module to the next like the latest Netflix series.
In a hyperconnected world, rote classroom activities will give way to a fusion of lesson plans with pick-and-choose, asynchronous, video game-like distance learning options (or motion activated learning while on the move, with an audio lecture or podcast and no screens or devices at all), all galvanized by instructors with captivating online personalities that foster far better student engagement than physical classrooms can.
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In response to the increasing misalignment between higher-ed curriculum and fast-changing workforce skills, educational institutions have begun showing greater interest in industry-influenced collaborative programs. The force multiplier is the level of scale and engagement that can be obtained online.
What does that portend for the future of learning? Like musicians or filmmakers, we might see teachers and professors begin to franchise or license lessons with on-demand revenue allocation. The rise of offerings like Master Class — a fee-based streaming platform that offers stepwise lessons from the world’s virtuoso storytellers, chefs, filmmakers, etc. -- provides an idea of how this might work.
A glance at the music industry is instructive: Today, recorded music is a loss-leader for far more lucrative live concerts (assuming global contagion is not a factor). Applied to education models of tomorrow, it’s conceivable that online revenues from teaching might be the loss-leader to (far more lucrative) in-person “lectures-as-concerts.” Or, said differently, in the inimitable words of music industry mogul Jay-Z, “I am not [just] a businessman. I am the business, man.”
To prepare the next generation of workers for the very different jobs in the future of work will require institutions of higher education to adopt new models and heed lessons learned during the pandemic. Flexible and predictive approaches to skills identification and curriculum change, and digitally driven modes of education delivery — this is the work ahead.
To learn more, please download our report, The Work Ahead in Higher Education: Repaving the Road for the Employees of Tomorrow
CEO/Project Leader/Government Affairs/Ocean Lover
3 年Loved the way you set up the conversation in the post. Reading the article forces the question of what will incentivize the education sector to make these changes when tuition rates and prestige are probably at record highs? Some of the same folks at Linkedin who evangelize a "skills-based hiring" approach still have their universities or former employers in their profiles to assure status.
Global Analyst Relations Leader at Wipro
3 年Admittedly, this piqued my interest because I have 3 kids in college. However, this article- and it’s corrolary report - are far more interesting from the perspective of how higher education MUST change to create better experiences and models for learning that incoming students (and future employers?) will (should?) demand. The real game changer? These new Digitally-driven education modes should enable higher education access to traditionally underserved groups which possess equal or greater capabilities AND different & important POVs. That’s a lot of words to say “this should be one hell of a ride!”